The Gray Prince

The Gray Prince – the novel – is reserved, dry, sly, a streamlined adventure, a mystery box full of more mystery boxes, a meditation on manifest destiny, a critical contemplation on colonialism that left me a little disturbed. The Gray Prince – the character – is a fool, a clown, an object of exploitation, an embittered revolutionary, a supporting character of more importance as an object of critical contemplation than as an actual supporting character. I don’t know why the book is tit [...]

The Gray Prince may be one of Jack Vance’s greatest stories.First of all Vance provides a prologue that explains the Gaean Reach storyline and how the events described in the novel fit into that extended world creation. Like Robert A. Heinlein and Poul Anderson’s future history timelines, there is a continuity of shared world building in Vance’s Gaean Reach novels, of which The Gray Prince is one.The prologue begins: “The space age is thirty thousand years old. Men have moved from star t [...]

The book:This is a solid entry into Vance's canon. It compares well with many of his upper second-tier novesls, such as Blue World, Maske: Thaery, Languages of Pao, etc. The characters are memorable and interesting, the setting is complex and fascinating, the plot moves quickly, and a feeling of suspense hangs over the entire work. In fact, there would be no controversy if it wasn't such compelling reading- a boring book would be forgotten and no one would argue about it.The controversy:First pu [...]

This book is the weakest Vance novel i have read. A bitter story about humans colonizing a world where intelligent alien species live, it lacks the heart,wit you expect from Vance. Not to mention his prose isnt as strong,crisp as usual.The story was too slow,not interesting enough for Vance.It is a decent book but cant compare to the other novels of his i have read. I could have rated it 3 stars if i didnt expect more from him such as better prose,more intellegent and emotional deeper story. I c [...]

I'm going to start by quoting the review by Spider Robinson in Galaxy, August 1975:Jack Vance’s The Gray Prince bothers the hell out of me. It has an excellent theme, with a tomato-surprise ending that defies guessing, and involves some moral questions that are more and more relevant these days. But you have to wade through some god-awful stuff to get there.The writing style is of a pedantic, top-heavy sort which the dust-jacket calls “evocative” and I call Byzantine — it kept me thumbin [...]

*Disclaimer: I'm not an English speaker. I'll continue updating spelling and grammar on this article as I learn. The Gray Prince review or why some man fall in love with the wrong woman.I've read this one when I was 17 or so.I just remember one point from this book due to a discussion about beauty standards and such.The Gray Prince's story goes on a context where -at least- two species coexists in a perpetual conflict of the "Civilization vs Savagery" type: the Uldras (gray prince's specie) and [...]

The Domains of Koryphon is unusual for Vance in containing a fairly explicit political message - in this case about property ownership, conquest, and prior possession. There's also a leavening of Vance's more standard self-reliance, and a more evident than usual criticism of effete urbanites in favor of taciturn, outdoorsy, cowboy types.That said, there's also the usual Vance inventiveness and language. Erjins and morphotes share land with Uldras, Wind-runners, land-barons, and Outkers. Tragedie [...]

Zane Grey IN SPACE. (Not a good thing)pussrebootsir/blog/

The Gray Prince was first published as a two-part serialization titled The Domains of Koryphon in Amazing Science Fiction in 1974 in the August and October issues. As a novel it was first published in hardback with the new title The Gray Prince by Bobbs-Merrill in February 1975. I have the December 1975 Avon 164 page paperback (plus a 4 page prologue) that is available used from and other used book sellers. This is my second reading of the novel and I liked it slightly better the second time. A [...]

You can only read this with American history in the background - we have a planet in the faraway future, mankind has colonised the stars and quickly split up into several sub-species, most of their inter-species contact long forgotten (though it's implied not too much has changed physically).It's mostly settled around one of the rich big houses, colonists on the planets, who've taken their land from the natives (think Native Americans, on horses-not-named-horses carrying rifles). Here's the firs [...]

"Except for a few special cases, title to every parcel of real property derives from an act of violence, more or less remote, and ownership is only as valid as the strength and will required to maintain it. This is the lesson of history, whether you like it or not." - Gerd Jemasze, in Jack Vance’s The Gray PrinceA classic Vance tale of interracial intrigue. The Gray Prince, Jorjol the Uldran, like the protagonist of the movie Belle, suffers as a child the indignity of prejudice even in the hou [...]

I didn't like the book. The plot is too artificial with too much background information and not enough flow. The characters are not believable and are sometimes simply dropped while the story continues. Add the predictable end and you have a novel that shouldn't have been written. Rather grab one of the other books of Jack Vance!

Classic Vance, with his favorite theme of the rugged individualist vs. the effete over-civilized society. Guess who he prefers?

Vance as a brilliant world builder, discusses the human condition in a far future where humans left Earth and created the Gaen Reach. Koryphon is a world populated by humans who landed at this planet many centuries ago and conquered its lands creating a nomadic society. Two native alien races share the planet lands and are slaved by humans. One of them is considered devoid of intelligence thus being blessed by serving as slaves while the other one seems to have intelligence but mostly uses it to [...]

There is something in this book that does not work out as it should. Here are most of the remarkable characteristics of Vance stories and style, but It is hard to me to put the finger on what it is. If I must adventure on a guess, I think that his usual fresh and joyous narrative is somewhat repressed in favour of a detailed society explanation. The plot itself is directed as to dress some final moral/personal idea, which in turns neglect the wonderful "adventure for the adventure" that works pe [...]

The focus on politics more than story, adventure and romance made this a little bit less compelling than some other JV-books, but this was still a great book, very much in the vein of The Blue World and The Languages of Pao where societies and the ideas about them are also prominent.

Piquant, mannered, stylised.

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Emphasis on character development with an interesting cast.The title character is not actually the main character.

Must have read this book at least ten times over the years and I still enjoy it.

I read this story shortly after finishing Dune. Even with the tiny footnotes at the bottom of most of the pages, it was a better story than Dune, while still having a very similar theme.